Dodgy ALP ratbags still ratting on each other

It was Saturday morning and classical music was floating through solicitor John Gerathy’s multimillion-dollar waterfront apartment in Woolloomooloo. ”You have got me at an inopportune moment,” said Gerathy when he picked up the phone. ”I have got some guests here at home. They’ve come to visit,” he said.

Only last month, the Herald revealed that Gerathy, 67, had checked himself into a mental health facility, telling corruption investigators he was too ill to give evidence.

However, the Independent Commission Against Corruption, which has all but finished inquiries in Operation Jasper, will be sitting this week to hear two vital witnesses who have previously been unavailable: Gerathy and the Obeids’ accountant, Sid Sassine, who has been overseas.

Gerathy declined to discuss the nature of his illness. When asked if he had recovered, he replied: ”I am not sure about that.” Would he be giving evidence on Tuesday? ”Oh, well, I, ah, I hope so,” he said.

As disgraced minister Ian Macdonald’s business partner, Gerathy has been described as a ”crucial witness” in the state’s most sensational corruption inquiry, which is keen to know why Gerathy bankrolled Macdonald to the tune of $550,000 and why documents in Gerathy’s handwriting appear to suggest that Macdonald stood to receive up to $4 million from the allegedly crooked government coal tender which had already landed the family of former Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid $30 million.

Gerathy had already had an unpleasant visit to the witness box, when he was called to give evidence last November. On that occasion he was confronted with the accusation that, in breach of the commission’s confidentiality requirements, Macdonald had rung him straight after giving evidence in camera last September.

As a result of that call, Gerathy immediately took action to retrieve a legal file from his old law firm. That file, which the commission has now heard has crucial documents missing, was the file of Alan Fang.

Fang has already ratted on his dodgy mates.

Fang, who followed Eddie Obeid into the ICAC witness box last month, dropped a bombshell when he revealed that in June 2008, before the government announced it was going to call for tenders for exploration licences for new mining areas, he discussed going into a mining joint venture with the Obeid family and that he spoke to Eddie Obeid in his office in Parliament House about this. He also said that Macdonald was aware of the deal as he had put him in touch with Obeid.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. And when he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet, and as a result he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist that takes no prisoners.